The latest development diary for Ninja Theory's Hellblade offers an up close look at the incredibly life-like protagonist of the hack-and-slash adventure game.

Development surrounding Ninja Theory's Hellblade has been incredibly secretive about the team has been hesitant to share much of the game's plot or mechanical details so far. As the 2016 release window continues to approach, it seems like the team behind the action, hack-and-slasher is ready to start letting a few secrets slip out. The latest development diary for the game shines a light on Hellblade's incredibly life-like character models.

At first glance, it's very hard to notice that the face in the development diary video is a character model and not a human female. The life-like protagonist, Senua (who gamers saw in action at E3 2015), is being brought to life with the help of an outside company called 3Lateral. The team-up between 3Lateral and the creators of DMC: Devil May Cry and Heavenly Sword seems to be a fantastic collaboration if this preview is any indication of the rest of the game's quality.

Senua was first shown off during Hellblade's reveal in 2014, but the development diary explains that the team has been hard at work tweaking and refining the character model in the time leading up to the game's release. After comparing the reveal assets to this development diary, it seems safe to say that calling these improvements 'tweaks' is selling the team a little short...

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Unfortunately, there are still a lot of major questions about Hellblade that consumers will want to see answered before they are ready to start shelling out pre-order money. The game is meant to bridge the gap between AAA and indie with a high production quality and a focus on story and fun, addictive gameplay. The game asks players to take control of the Celtic goddess as she embarks on a supernatural journey to the deepest, darkest parts of the underworld.

Although there's no doubt that The Last of Us Remastered was gorgeous, the PS4 has yet to launch an exclusive title that really shows off the power of the current console-gen. Uncharted 4's extended gameplay demo suggests that the game is poised to blow us away in 2016 and, hopefully, Hellblade can manage to pull off a similar feat.

What do you think of the development diary video? Are you going to pick this game up? Let us know in the comments.

Hellblade will release for PlayStation 4 in 2016.